Even More Njawara

Monday 14-4-08

One of the great things about being 2/5 deaf is that depending on which ear you sleep on- when in the African countryside you can either hear everything or nothing.

I heard the bats beeping Major 3rds together, the mangoes crashing onto various roofs as they fall from all of the trees, the donkeys randomly freaking out, the broadcast prayer service in the morning, roosters, cooing doves (lets be honest: pigeons)

Momodou's brother died this morning and yet he still went ahead and taught us- which is extraordinary. I like the sound of the Kora much more when it is not amplified.

The musicians in Mandinka culture are hereditary. If you are from the family then you are a Jelli (Jali? Jeli? Whatever.) They are peacemakers, messengers, and mediators as well as entertainers. A lot of the songs are teaching or advice songs.

I think one of my favorite things about this trip so far is how everyone talks so very openly about their bowel movements. We know who has gone, who hasn't, how many times and how successful they were. It is hilarious. I mean, part of it is that we really are keeping an eye on every one's health, but we're talking about poop! All the time! I feel like a 3 year old telling jokes.

The men from the camp are watching television outside run on the generator and right now it is playing something random and vaguely classical and the beating/squeaky bats are hitting the up beat of the waltz that they are playing. Awesome. Good work, bats.

We went for a walk in the village today and visited the school. There are a lot of what look like abandoned buildings around- I suppose they could be occupied, but it reminded me that Njawara used to be a larger village. Momodou was telling us that many people left- but I didn't understand the reasons he gave us. It sounded like someone was spreading rumors about a curse or something?

We have learned 4.5 songs in Mandinka now. I've recorded all but the national anthem, which I will get tomorrow. I've also recorded the Arabic school right outside the walls of the camp where they sings bits from the Koran over and over and over again in that bellow-y "I'm singing loud" voice that kids scream in.

I've learned to play a little tune on the Kora. I'm not keen on tuning the Kora, but it is a joy to play and sounds lovely. Momodou has come over twice to show me little things which is gratifying. He has the best "wise elder" face.

Okay, so I know "bats fly in your hair" is a myth and all because they have sonar and know where they're going and all of that- but one just flew into my hair! And I wasn't even moving around wildly or anything! I was just standing there! It richocheted off my head and landed in the corner where is sat- stunned for a few seconds before flying off again, aiming for the ceiling.

More Njawara

I wrote journal entries with the idea that they were going to become blog posts, so in the interest of not wasting that content I'm going to transcribe one here. Some of the information is stuff I've already told you, but it was written in Africa! Which makes it better than those namby pamby entries written in London! Yeah! Okay. Done now.

Sunday 13-4-08

We woke up at 5am this morning while it was still dark at the ECCO house (already this morning seems ages away) we packed up our stuff and drank fruit tea while the sun rose. Then we tumbled into the van and drove toward Banjul. There was a large, imposing arch- which is how we knew we were in the capital. Buildings were white with green trim and small signs that said things like "democratic assembly" and "fisheries and agriculture bureau"

We got in line for the ferry just as the market for the queue was setting up. Tara, our expert haggler, bought us 5 loaves of bread since we had eaten nothing at breakfast. Many people were walking around selling various wares: dubious looking perfume, assorted watches, bras on a stick and the like. I bought a baseball cap because the sun was so bright. It turned out that it unzips into a visor- so I am quite pleased with that.

I love sleeping under mosquito nets. I love the feeling of being enclosed and protected while still being able to see all around.

We arrived at the camp just before lunch. Once we crossed the river, filled up with gas, and continued driving the scenery finally stopped looking like India and began to look more like what I expected Africa to look like: lone leafy trees amongst bushed and grass. Grass roofed huts and fences made from reeds and sticks rather than concrete blocks.

Everything is fenced in here. Empty plots of land are fenced in, housed in the middle of nowhere amongst the bush are fenced in. The camp and various sections are the camp are fenced in and so on.

When we arrived the people who work here were lounging about and laughing. They laugh quite a lot. One woman, whose name I don't know (Yuma), is always making jokes and imitation people. When I awoke after my "it is waaaay too hot" nap and wandered back into the living clearing she was telling crude jokes. Her English is not terribly good, but her hand gestures are plenty graphic enough.

It is Mango season! Only just beginning so some are not very ripe- but mangoes- all the time mangoes that we rip the skin off with our teeth like the savage mango hunters we are.

When we first arrived the manager sat us down, introduced his staff, had us introduce ourselves and then told us how very very very very very very very very (etc.) important we were. Basically: we bring money into the village.

After nap time he sat us around again and let us ask questions. It was dusk and his accent is difficult for me to follow- so I stared up at the base of the leaf cover from the frees and watched as dozens and dozens of bats swooped around and ate mosquitoes. It was beautiful.

London Stuff

I picked up the Baroque bass from Peter the other day. It is lovely with a bizarrely dark varnish job that makes it look like cheap furniture, but with wonderful thick gut strings that make me play with much better technique in order to get any sort of good sound. I'm excited about experimenting with it.

My friend Ellie who is a saxophonist that I met on the Contemporary Dance School project asked me to play on her recital so we had our first rehearsal today. We are playing a Joni Mitchell song (river) with two basses. Charlie, a jazz bassist I met in Jazz Singers is the other bass player- so we've got super amplified jazz bass and a baroque bass...it actually works better than it should. The sounds blend enough to make sense but are different enough to be interesting and the raspyness of the gut strings brings a nice touch to the whole thing. I'm excited, plus I really like Charlie and Ellie so I am happy to be working with both of them.

I got my bow rehaired as well and picked that up from Malcolm Healey the other day. I was nervous about seeing him actually because I had left the broken bass there and was planning on not taking for the whole time that I promised to borrow it for. I needn't have worried, Malcolm is a sweetheart of a man. He decided that I should be charged 3 quid for the repairs (!) and took off 80% of the original rental price we agreed on because I didn't end up using the instrument that much (!!) Yay! I promised I would always bring bow rehairs to him... (lovely hair too, it is so nice to have clean and thick hair on my bow)

So that is the London news. I'll be starting work again soon and in the meantime am getting down to business with my final project for the year, working on my electronic music projects, and generally getting back to being a good student.

Have I ever mentioned that I love libraries? I've been ploughing through books the past four days (4.5 books in four days) and soaking up information. I love love love libraries. They're a cheap way to feed my habit.

Pictures of Njawara

My hut, I slept on the Right
The Chickens! I loved the chickens! They circled around the camp all the time and the little ones would suddenly realize they were behind and then scamper to catch up. I took far far far too many pictures of the chickens.
The beautiful trees and the entrance gate to the Njawara cultural camp. This makes the camp look a bit bigger than it really was. I took this from the food area.
Some of the kids from the village.
Mamadou, his Kora, and his little amplifier.

I forgot to write about the mangos- there were mango trees all over the place and we would eat them all the time. Everyone would eat them all the time, you bite the skin, peel it with your teeth and then gnaw on the fruit until you get to the pit/seed. We went through our entire supply of floss in four days. The mangos would fall onto the aluminum roof with a collosal bang and startle us.

Njawara

The first camp we went to was in Njawara. Getting there involved taking a ferry across the Gambia river. There are only a few ferries (four) and many people who want to take them (there are a few other ferries that will take you across, but the one that we took is the only one that reliably doesn't sink. Good idea to take that one, yes?) so we had to wake up early in the morning and pile in to the van with all of our stuff. This being the beginning of the trip- our stuff didn't amount to all that much. Yet.

The ferry was completely crammed with people and we almost didn't get on- but our ECCO guy who stayed with us the whole time: Habib, went to bat for us and between him and Mamadou (I'm sure I've spelled that wrong) they got us on the boat. Anyhow- after a long and bumpy journey we ended up in the camp. It was a bit of a lackluster welcome- everyone was sitting on foam mattresses propped up on cinder blocks, and for the most part they stayed there, but we were introduced to everyone and led to our huts.

The huts were made of concrete with thatch/straw roofs and tie dyed fabric for the door. The beds were foam and sunken in to the concrete. The huts were in a circle around a small planting area with a path that lead to the eating area and the class area.

We were eventually served food, which was good because I was *starving* and the night before we had had extra special chicken nuggets...we actually had chicken nuggets with some regularity while in Africa, much to our dismay. But I think that first afternoon in Njawara we had benechin. Here are some recipes for Gambian food: http://kidzbiz.100megsfree5.com/africa_cook.htm (I think bitter tomatoes are tasty, though I'm not sure you can get them in America?) After lunch we went and napped and eventually came back out to sit in the common area and ask the camp manager questions. His accent was such that I had difficulty understanding, so instead I stared up into the twilight and watched hundreds of bats fly back and forth overhead in and out of the mango trees.

That evening Mamadou played for us. He had a tiny little amp that was run off of batteries and while it *was* louder- it also horrifically distorted the sound. The Kora is an absolutely beautiful instrument when unamplified...ah well. In lessons he would sometimes not turn the amplifier on and I was always excited about that.

The first night we spent in Njawara was by far the loudest night we had anywhere. The bats (I assume it was the bats) were terrifically loud and beeped in a rhythmic, minor third pattern. Then there were all of the insects, the donkeys down the road freaking out, and the call to prayer at 4 or 5 in the morning. I vowed to record the nocturnal sounds the next night, but it was never again that loud nor interesting.

Mamadou taught us 5 Mandinka songs. (a little bit weird that we learned the Mandinka songs in the Wollof village and the Wollof songs in a Mandinka village...) He taught us in exactly the way that we have been taught to teach. He was always very supportive and positive, he broke the songs down in to small pieces and taught them by call and response, when any of us were lagging behind he didn't single us out but instead brought the entire group back a couple of steps to reinforce where we now were and each class time we reviewed what we had already learned.

We had the same class structure for the entire three weeks. We would wake up, have breakfast, and then the first set of classes for the day. When we later got into the tribes with more dancing we would do the dancing in the morning. I didn't have a watch so I was never really very clear what time it was, but I think the morning classes were three hours long from about 9:30 to 12:30. Then there would be a big break and we would wander the village, chat, work on our notebooks, review the songs we had learned that morning, play cards, nap, or just sweat a lot. We then had to wait until after the mid afternoon prayers to start class again which they normally would at about 5:30, I think. The evening classes were only about 2 hours long, I think. Then supper and sunset followed by the generators turning on and while we were in Njawara: vicious games of cards that frequently left people minorly injured.

One day we walked up to the local school and met some of the teachers and the vice principal there. All of the buildings were painted with Things To Remember such as "hard work before success" and a painted over "no vernacular" which intrigued me- why was that one painted over? I took lots of pictures of small children and then let them see. I had to be cool about them smearing mango-y fingers all over the camera screen because they were just so darn excited about seeing the pictures. Plus, they were cute.

Mamadou always left his Kora out in the eating area for us to play if we wanted to. We all muddled around on it a bit, and while I was playing it one afternoon he came over and started to teach me the beginning of the accompaniment for one of the songs that we were learning called "kyra" which means peace. I really like playing the Kora so I got fairly proficient at that little portion of music which was useful at the end of the trip when we picked the Koras up at Mamadou's house because there was a GMajor chord from it that people used to tune the instruments and I played it again to tell them which strings the chord involved.

The second day of classes he started teaching all of us to play the Kora in a sort of masterclass style with the person being taught in the center of the circle and everyone else listening and waiting for their turn. It worked well because the people at the beginning got more time and the people at the end knew what the phrase was supposed to sound like already.

The last day that we were in Njawara we decided to go on a boat trip. This ended up being slightly sketchier than we had realized and a couple of people backed out at the last moment, but that was okay because they got to take a cart ride back to the camp. I, in my gracefulness, managed to stick my foot/leg into some rather disgusting mud and almost lost my sandal. The boats were canoes made out of hollowed out trees, both of which had some significant leaks in them that required us to bail out water during the trip. That being said it was a nice trip and we saw lots of birds and oysters and one clawed crabs. At the end of the trip one of the young fishermen cleaned off my sandal (which was *very* nice of him) and we helped another man fill a canoe with giant bags of rice and flour and sugar and barrels of oil to take up the river to Senegal. It occurred to me that he was the West African version of a trucker.

So that is Njawara- pictures from the plane ride over, the beach the first day near Banjul, and from Njawara are now up on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/10933141@N07/
enjoy- and stay tuned for the next entries which will be about Berefet and the classes we had there.

Back in London

We arrived at Gatwick airport at 3:45am this morning. None of us managed to sleep very well on the plane, but we were all fairly coherant all things considered. I think we even managed to get all of the instruments home to their proper places. Simon, Kate's boyfriend was kind enough to pick us up at the airport and drive us home. We fit 5 people and 16 pieces of luggage in to his station wagon (oddly called an estate car in the UK) and drove home as the sun was rising.

When we got back to Sundial I was very awake and very hungry so I scoured the kitchen for food and ended up eating some pasta and writing out the previous blog while sitting in the middle of all of my stuff that I dropped on the floor of my room. I managed to be totally awake until about 8am when I passed out on my bed.

I woke up again at lunchtime and called up Jon. We went wandering around brick lane and ended up eating at a BBQ stand before heading over to Regent's park to meet the dinner club people. They were having a picinic but unfortunately were just about to leave as we got there (we had taken our own sweet time and bought ice cream cones because it was such a lovely day) so Jon and I borrowed their frisbee and went off in search of more ice cream.

It was a bit too windy for the tiny, flimsy frisbee but we did have a nice game with four cousins hanging out with their father/uncle at the Park. There was a large group of fun people under a tree that I was convinced were a bunch of goths that looked like they were having a lot of fun. Jon and I kept trying to figure out a way to go over there and say "you look cool, can we hang out too?" without being you know, weird. Fortunately frisbees solve all problems and we ended up having a fun game with their heavier, and therefore better, frisbee.

Anyhow, it was a lovely nice day wandering around London and it reminded me of when I came to audition and exploring all over the city. Good welcome back day that way.

The tiredness is hitting now, so no more writing for the time being. I have uploaded all of the pictures and will begin transcribing my journal and posting pictures and videos starting tomorrow.

Gambia tallies

No. of Days in Africa: 22
No. of Guildhall Students on Gambia trip: 10
No. of tribes taught by: 5
No. of Mandinka songs we learned: 5
No. of Mandinka songs I remember without listening to someone else sing them: 5
No. of Mandinka phrases learned: 5
No. of Fula songs we learned: 5
No. of Fula songs I remember without listening to someone else sing them: 1
No. of Wollof songs we learned: 2
No. of controversies Wollof songs caused: 1
No. of Wollof phrases learned: 1
No. of Susu songs learned: 1
No. of Jolla songs learned: 1
No. of Susu/Jolla ballets learned: 1 or 3 depending on how you count
No. of hours audio recorded in The Gambia: 7
No. of people in the van on the way to the airport: 18
No. of instruments purchased and brought back to the UK: 25
No. of individual pieces of checked luggage for group: 29
No. of Kilos over the weight limit: 38
Cost per kilo over weight limit: 800D
Amount we paid for going over the weight limit: 0D
No. of Koras: 5
No. of Wollof drums: 5
No. of Djembes: 3
No. of Ballafons: 4 (3 small, 1 large)
No. of Talking drums: 2
No. of Fula flutes: 1
No. of Calabash drums: 1
No. of Calabash Rattles: 4 (2 large, 2 small)
Average price of instrument: 2000 Delasi (range: 400-3000)
Average monthly wage for Gambians: 1000D/month
37D=1GBP, 18.5D=$1
Rate of inflation in The Gambia: ruthless
Average weekly drinks bill for Tara: 1,150D
Average weekly drinks bill for Caroline: 450D
Cost 1.5L bottle of water: 35D
Cost bottle of beer: 40D
Cost bottle of soda: 30D
Taste of African Fanta: delicious
Average wake up time: Me-7:30am, everyone else-8:15
Average bed time: Me- 9:30pm, everyone else- 12Midnight
No. of days practiced yoga in the morning: 10
No. of days sick enough to warrant missing class: 1
No. of monkeys seen: 10
No. of marriage proposals to group members: 3
No. of van breakdowns: 3
No. of hours waiting for the ferry between Njawara and Berefet: 4
No. of instruments damaged in the flights: 2 (the G string broke on my electric bass on the way over and Emma’s Kora’s bridge broke on the way back)
No. of hours Jorge had between flights from Gambia and to Portugal: 2
No. of Mosquito bites: countless- but 5 on my left pinky finger alone.
No. of Mosquito bites before Wednesday April 30: 5 total.
No. of Malarone pills left for me to take: 6
No. of People taking Lariam: 1
No. of People Doxycycline: 2
No. of People Malarone: 7
No. conversations about bowel movements: countless, at least two a day.
No. of Gambians now being sponsored by GSMD students to go to school: 1
Average No. mangoes consumed each day: 1.5
No. of comments on how happy I seemed to be going back to London: 4